


it's you.

by theentiregdtime



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Fluff, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Making Out, but if you're into that sort of thing then you've come to the right place baby, no actual sex happens in this lol, this is sort of soft and tender and out of character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:49:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theentiregdtime/pseuds/theentiregdtime
Summary: Mac isn’t sure how he ruined sex, but he definitely ruined it. Somehow, he ruined it, and he’s so, so pissed at himself.Maybe Dennis wasn’t ready to do this, Mac had considered. Maybe being with a guy for real was too much and too sudden. Maybe whatever he’d repressed over the last forty-something years was clawing its way back up to strangle him. Mac had firsthand experience with that. He knew what it looked like and he knew what it felt like.Then Dennis let out a shaking breath and said, “It’s you.”That was what Mac was afraid of.





	it's you.

Mac isn’t sure how he ruined sex, but he definitely ruined it. Somehow, he ruined it, and he’s so, _so_ pissed at himself.

It hadn’t even really been _sex_ yet at all, but it was still the best thing that ever happened to him. Holy shit, give him the pearly gates, give him a black belt from Jet Li, give him a Project Badass full-length film with a twelve-bus motorcycle jump…

There was no better feeling, even in his craziest daydreams, than having Dennis underneath him in bed- not undressed, not clutching the sheets and screaming, not banging against the headboard- but shifting softly and running his hands along Mac’s shoulders and laughing in disbelief, breath hitching, eyelashes fluttering, clothes crinkling, folding into him like a paper crane.

Then he’d suddenly gone still. His eyes had glazed over, like he was falling to his death and watching his entire life flash before him, and it was different than he remembered it. Mac’s first instinct had been that Dennis was panicking, until his gaze came back into focus and locked with his, and he whispered _“Oh, shit”_ with all the clarity in the world.

And then Mac didn’t know _what_ was wrong.

He’d hovered over Dennis and waited, searching his face for an answer and catching nothing but the sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard. He looked like the first person on Earth. He looked like Jesus Christ nailed to the sheets. He looked like a chiseled Roman statue frozen in marble.

Mac wanted his hands back on him, to kiss his bottom lip as it hung open, to pull him back from whatever cliff he was standing on the edge of in that moment.

“What?” he’d asked, tentatively, instead.

Maybe he wasn’t ready to do this, Mac had considered. Maybe being with a guy for real was too much and too sudden. Maybe whatever he’d repressed over the last forty-something years was clawing its way back up to strangle him. Mac had firsthand experience with that. He knew what it looked like and he knew what it felt like.

Then Dennis let out a shaking breath and said, _“It’s you.”_

That was what Mac was afraid of.

It wasn’t that he was a guy, or that he was moving too fast or too rough, or anything he could pinpoint at all. It was that he was… well, _him_\- and he wasn’t good enough.

Part of him had already known that, had even practiced for this outcome, and another, more naive part of him thought maybe that had changed. He thought Dennis _wanted_ him now.

But he didn’t.

He could get past the fact that Mac was a man, but not that he was… _Mac._

Before he could say anything, Dennis was already slipping out from underneath him like honey through a fork. He’d said he needed to get some air, and then he was pulling a hoodie over his shoulders and shutting the bedroom door behind him.

Mac collapsed into bed, bounced against the mattress, and groaned into the pillow. He didn’t feel like following Dennis. He didn’t know what he’d say when he caught up to him, anyways. It was tiring to keep chasing him all the time.

So instead, he’d waited there, for five minutes which turned into ten which turned into forty-five.

And here is now, flat on his back, hands folded over his stomach, lying in deafening silence and studying the ceiling like it’s the roof of his casket.

He doesn’t know how to ask God for something he’s not sure he’s supposed to want, so he stays quiet.

It was almost easier to be confused, to have the storm raging outside the window, out of the corner of his eye, and stay sheltered- but now he’s out of the closet and he’s out in the rain, and he’s not confused anymore, not about anything, and he _knows_ he loves Dennis. He knows it more than he knows he loves God, because neither of them are in this room right now, and he knows which one he’d want to walk in the door if he had to make a choice.

Before the anxious thoughts bouncing around Mac’s head can drive him completely stir-crazy, he hears the door to the apartment open and shut.

He sits up like an expectant dog who’s been alone with the radio all day, anticipating the doorknob turning any second.

A minute passes and it doesn’t. He hears Dennis adjust something on the couch. Five more minutes pass and it still doesn’t turn, and Mac can hear Dennis singing to himself. His voice is smooth like he’s been drinking, and Mac doesn’t recognize the song, but he makes out the words _right down the line it’s been you and me._

He doesn’t really seem angry, and if he still wanted to be alone, he wouldn’t have come back…

Mac decides to roll off the mattress and investigate.

The only light in the living room is a dim lamp and the moon streaming in, and the only sound is Dennis humming in his throat as he flips through a scrapbook. Mac isn’t sure why he fished that out- it’s been gathering dust on the shelf for years.

Mac approaches him like he’s walking into a tiger cage wearing a jumpsuit made of ground chuck.

“Hey, Dennis…” he sing-songs, folding his hands together nervously.

Dennis stops humming and shuts the book. He sets it on the coffee table beside an emptied hip flask. 

“Hey.”

Mac glances to the toppled-over container, then back to Dennis. He doesn’t know how much he’s had to drink, but he can smell the whiskey coming off of him in waves.

“What are you doing?”

Dennis fixes his gaze on the closed book as if he’s still staring longingly at the pictures inside of it. He clears his throat.

“Was looking for something,” he mumbles.

Mac hopes he wasn’t having that crisis about aging and the passage of time and fleeting beauty and all that shit again. He goes through that once or twice a month, and Mac telling him he’s fine and he looks great is never enough to calm his existential dread.

“Did you find it?” is all he can think to ask.

Dennis’ eyes are on him again. He looks like he did earlier, but a little drunker, a little softer, a little more vulnerable. He looks less afraid.

He looks so, so young to Mac. He looks like he did the day they met. He looks like the past twenty years and he looks like the next twenty and he looks like forever until the end of time.

“Yeah,” he answers.

Mac doesn’t know what to do with himself, because Dennis might have changed his mind about him, about _them_. He might not want to be touched anymore. So he just stands there in front of the sofa, breath baited, fidgeting with the fabric of his shirt.

“Hey, I totally ruined the moment, man,” Dennis slurs. “M’sorry.”

“No, Den, you don’t have to apologize,” Mac insists and holds his hands out in front of him. “I get it, you changed your mind, we can just go back to-”

“No, shit, no, Mac,” Dennis cuts him off, cringing. He seems surprised that Mac would be willing to drop all of this in a heartbeat to make him comfortable again. “I just… needed to think about some stuff.”

Unclear as it is, the response is still relieving. Mac doesn’t know what Dennis wants, but it kind of seems like he might still want _this_. He takes that as an invitation to sit on the table across from him and silently pray it doesn’t break under his weight.

“So…” -he drags the word out- “did you?”

Dennis shakes his head, avoiding Mac’s face and choosing to make conversation with his knees instead.

“Nah. Mostly just walked around and got drunk… watched people…” He shrugs. “I guess I realized there was nothing to figure out.”

Mac has no idea what that means- if it’s good or if it’s bad- or what he’s supposed to be doing with himself right now. Before he has to figure it out, Dennis reaches for him and brushes his knuckles against his leg.

“You can uh…” -he swallows and licks over his bottom lip- “come back.”

Embers of cautious excitement start to rise up from the bottom of Mac’s stomach.

“You want me to?” It’s a pointless question, but he still feels like he needs to ask permission- for _sure_.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Like, you want-”

_“Mac.”_

He doesn’t need to ask again.

Mac falls into Dennis like he’s been doing all his life and plants his hands on his waist, strong enough to keep him there, but gentle enough that he can go if he changes his mind. Their lips connect and Dennis tastes like maple whiskey and smells like burning oak and he’s _so fucking beautiful_. Mac worries he’s not enough again, feels awkward and wrong, like he’s somewhere he doesn’t belong, until Dennis threads his hands through his hair and whines in the back of his throat, and Mac knows he belongs _right here_ chasing that sound with his tongue.

He doesn’t want to be anywhere else. Even if he’s not enough- even if he’s never enough his whole life- he’d rather be insufficient for Dennis than be somebody else’s entire world.

Dennis plants a few small kisses along Mac’s lips and whispers against his mouth, “It’s been a long time.” His breath is like burnt vanilla sugar and he’s everything.

“You were gone, like, an _hour_,” Mac replies, and he intends it to sound how it felt- like a goddamn eternity- but it comes out all wrong.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Before Mac can figure out what he _does_ mean, their lips are crashing together again and he doesn’t give a shit. Dennis’ hands slide up his shoulder blades and draw him in, between his legs that part like butterfly wings to make space for him.

He digs one of his hands into the back of Mac’s t-shirt, balling the fabric and pressing his knuckles into him like he doesn’t want him to go. He’s not going to go anywhere, he swears he’s never going to fucking go anywhere as he clasps Dennis’ jaw and kisses him with the fury of a thousand suns. If it’s too rough or their teeth clash too hard, Dennis doesn’t protest, just responds with a soft sigh that Mac can feel hot against his face. It’s the only sound in the room other than the smacking of their lips, and it fills the whole apartment and Mac’s whole world.

He lets his eyes flutter open for a second and catches the sight of Dennis’ face in his hands, wrinkling faintly at the edges, calm and tender and fragile, and it’s the closest thing to God he’s ever seen.

He shuts them again and he’s kissing Dennis every time he _should_ have kissed him- in high school under the bleachers with a lit cigarette in his hand, in the bed of his college dorm over winter break, on the floor of their empty apartment next to a pile of unopened boxes, in a booth strewn with paperwork on their first night in the bar, using the salt on his lips as the chaser to a shot of tequila, on a day he never moved out, on the night of a wedding Dennis never had, on the evening of a monthly dinner they can both call a date out loud. He’s kissing him in a hotel bed with the curtains open to a view of the beach below, kissing him at the bottom of the ocean hand-in-hand, kissing him over a crate missing ammo that doesn’t matter because it’s enough to know that he knows him and maybe he tells him he loves him instead. He’s kissing him every day of their lives together, every time he wants to, every time he _ever _wanted to, and they’re young and growing older, but still so young and still the same as they’ve always been.

Mac doesn’t know how it took him all this time to realize it was always Dennis. He thinks if he’d been at peace with his sexuality, his religion, himself… he would have known it all along. It would have always been there. It _was_ always there- he just didn’t want to look too closely at it. Now he can’t look away from it. It’s bright and blinding and it’s been raging all his life, ever since the first day they met.

Mac pulls away and they both take a much-needed breath.

“I get it now.”

Dennis watches him expectantly, like he’s wondering how he got so far away. “Get what?”

An epiphanous chuckle escapes Mac’s lips and swells into full, breathy laughter. Dennis’ brow knots together and his expression twists like he’s not sure what he did that was so goddamn funny, and he doesn’t know if he should be offended or not.

_“It’s you.”_

Mac’s hands fall to Dennis’ shoulders to latch on to them.

“It’s _you_, man,” he repeats.

Dennis nods and rakes his tongue over his lips. He seems to know exactly what that means. “Yeah.”

Mac sits back against the table. He keeps a hand on Dennis’ leg to let him know he’s still there and strokes shapes into the denim of his jeans with his fingertips.

“Is it, like… weird?”

He doesn’t want to ask that, doesn’t want to put the idea of it in Dennis’ head- but he asks anyways, because if it is, he wants to know. He thinks he can keep waiting a little longer if he has to, a couple more weeks or a couple more years or the rest of their lives. It’s no big deal, he convinces himself.

Dennis’ eyes scan everything in the apartment except Mac. They fall on the front door, the game of checkers strewn across the kitchen table, the bookshelves full of shit they never read, the ancient box TV with the Hulk fist sat atop it, the pile of DVDs strewn on the floor, the scrapbook on the edge of the coffee table…

“Been weird for a long time, Mac.”

He doesn’t know how to take that, and Dennis won’t look at him to give him any clues. He’s just sitting there, glass-eyed, watching the photo album like it might disappear if he doesn’t. 

Mac wonders why Dennis isn’t watching him that way. He knows he has to look better now than he did in those old, poorly-lit photos of them poring over confusing papers and sharing their first official beer in Paddy’s Pub. Maybe Dennis liked him better then, loved him then; but ignorant, rage-fueled, repressed Mac was too insecure and confused to see it or even entertain the idea of it. Maybe he and Dennis were always passing like ships in the night, but never colliding, because struggling to keep breathing the air was simpler than admitting they both wanted to drown, both wanted something they weren’t supposed to want.

Maybe this has all been about Dennis settling as he gets older and lonelier, because they’re already living as if they’re married, so he may as well get something out of it. Maybe it’s about saving face and giving off the illusion that he’s gotten his life together and done the things people are supposed to do. Maybe Mac is a last resort. Maybe he’s the best of a shitty situation.

“I’m trying,” he chokes out as he clutches Dennis’ leg like a life preserver. “I’m trying to make you happy, man. I know I’m not…_ enough_… but I want to be.”

Dennis’ eyes dart up and bore straight into Mac’s skull. His lips fall open and they look so lonely that it takes all of Mac’s willpower not to slot them right in between his own.

“Not enough?”

Dennis draws a ragged breath.

“You’re _too much_.” He looks around the dark apartment again, like the past twenty years are playing on a loop in his head, until his eyes land on the empty space between them. “You’re everything.”

It’s muddled, but Mac knows what he hears. Dennis gets like this when he’s drunk on whiskey, all sappy and weak and saying things he doesn’t really mean. Mac hopes he means this one, this time.

Dennis is everything, too. He’s the kid he sold weed to in high school, he’s his best friend, he’s his roommate, he’s his business partner, he’s his blood brother, he’s the fucking love of his life. He’s constant. He’s always been there. Even if he wasn’t right in the middle of a moment in Mac’s life, he was still there, in the back of his mind or just out of sight.

How can two people live like that for more than twenty years? How can two people be so deeply melted into each other’s lives that they’re the same life and not know what they are? How long can they hold their breath before they have to gasp for air? How long can they keep their eyes glued shut before they have to peel them open? How long can two lines be drawn around each other until they cross?

Dennis looks back up at him, desperate, like he needs a response now, and _fuck_, Mac doesn’t know how to respond.

_I love you, I love you, I love you, I always loved you and I can’t believe it took this long for me to figure out what those words meant._

He doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he wraps secure arms around Dennis’ waist and pulls them together again. He’s kissing him, but Dennis isn’t kissing back, not right away, so Mac meets his shaking mouth over and over and again and again, until Dennis tilts his head and threads a hand around his neck and comes back to life all at once.

Mac brushes his fingers over the stomach of Dennis’ hoodie and gets a grunt in reply. Before he can worry it’s a _stop that_ noise, Dennis is tugging the zipper down, pulling it so hard that it snaps at the end. Mac doesn’t waste a second gliding his hands across Dennis’ stomach, over the thin fabric of his t-shirt, feeling him buckle and shudder underneath them. He slips his arms under Dennis’ hoodie and around him, and Dennis grabs at Mac’s shoulders and arches up, letting himself be suspended by nothing but Mac’s hands like a pieta statue, and then they’re crumbling on to the couch, falling around each other, falling into each other.

Dennis is on his back and Mac is hovering over him, and they feel too far apart, until Dennis spreads his legs and makes room for Mac between them, clutching desperately at the collar of his shirt and mangling it in his narrow fingers. Mac presses flush against him and combs his tongue along the roof of his mouth. He doesn’t want any more distance, he doesn’t want a fucking inch of empty space. He’s so goddamn tired of loving someone from across the room, from the other side of the door, from miles and miles away, from the Mamertine prison he put himself in for so many years. He wants to be _here_. He doesn’t care where he goes when he dies, he just wants to be right here while he’s alive, at the nave of their apartment, across the pew of their sofa, crossing the threshold of the rest of his life with his best friend pinned beneath him. Dennis Reynolds is the whole world, and if God made him so fucking beautiful, then how is Mac not supposed to love him?

He slides an arm under Dennis’ shirt and curls it around his back, pulling him up into him, receiving a fragile whine in return. His skin is so warm and his mouth is so bourbon-glossed that everything about him burns holy. The sharp edge of his shoulder is like a stigmata through Mac’s palm. He feels so small and so vulnerable, like he could be broken between two fingers, and Mac doesn’t know why he never realized that before. Maybe it’s because Dennis always seemed so big to him, bleeding into every corner of his life and filling all of the empty space. He’s so damn delicate, but he’s everything, all at once.

He ruts against him and Dennis buckles with a strangled groan that warms Mac’s blood over. He pushes back harder and scrapes his fingernails along Mac’s skin. It stings, and he likes that it stings. He wants the marks all across his back like whip lashes. Dennis starts to nudge his shirt up, and Mac hates to pull away, but uses the opportunity to take a few panting breaths as he rolls his tee over his head and tosses it to the floor.

When he ducks back in, Dennis halts him with hands against his jaw. He drags his tongue up Mac’s lips- warm and slick and syrupy. Mac ignites from the inside out. He’s never felt _anything_ like the fire that starts in his stomach and spreads to his whole body and makes him feel like a collapsing star.

He sits up on his knees and Dennis follows him, kisses him a hundred times on the way up. Mac slips the sweatshirt off his shoulders and lets it fall where it lands. When Dennis starts to rip his shirt off, Mac stops him and pulls the neck of it down to plant kisses along his collar bone and up into the crook of his neck, over and over again until he’s wet with spit. Dennis grabs the back of Mac’s head and wraps his legs around him as Mac traces the line of his clavicle with his tongue. Every sharp, jagged angle of him is so perfect that Mac doesn’t mind the talons ripping into his hair or the bony knees pestling into his sides. He wants all of it. He wants everything.

Mac lifts his head and Dennis is on him first, cupping his face and smacking closed-mouth pecks against his lips again and again and what feels like a thousand times. Mac prays it is as his hands fall back to Dennis’ hips. He prays these are the first thousand of a lifetime’s worth of kissing. Mac could die like this and he’d be happy to go.

Dennis takes a ragged, hitching breath, and Mac doesn’t realize he’s completely motionless until he hears a strangled sob and tastes salt against his lips.

Mac immediately goes into panic mode. _No, oh no, oh shit, I messed up_ is endlessly repeating in his mind. He doesn’t know what he did to upset him, but he draws back all at once. He’s far enough away to see Dennis gaping wide-eyed at him, tears streaming down his face and breath stuttering in and out. Mac doesn’t know how long he’s had his eyes open. 

“Fuck, Dennis, are you crying…?”

It’s a dumb question. Of course he is; it’s just that Mac hasn’t seen him like that in so long, he’s forgotten what it even looks like. This isn’t exactly the best time for a reminder- it feels like a punch to the gut.

“It’s you and me. It’s really you and me.”

_Oh._

Yeah. It’s really them.

Mac and Dennis.

On the couch where they’ve watched the same six movies every night for the past two decades- the couch where they tossed popcorn at each other and tried to catch it in their mouths just to end up losing it in the cushions- the couch where they tangled their legs together under warm blankets and pretended it was accidental when they fell asleep together- the couch where they’ve spent the last twenty years of their friendship. It’s all changed now. Everything has shifted and they’re half-undressed, wrapped around one another, touching and making out and being _honest_ for the first time in their entire lives.

It’s a lot to think about, but at the same time, it’s the easiest thing Mac’s ever done. There’s nothing _to _think about. It’s fucking crazy and impossible, but it’s so obvious and so, so effortless.

Dennis Reynolds is still his best friend, and his blood brother, and his business partner, and everything he’s always been to him. This whole _boyfriend_ thing is just another title to add to the list.

“Of course it is, man,” Mac chuckles as he wipes a tear away with his thumb. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Dennis grazes his teeth over his lip, eyes dipping down to the negative space between their bodies. “It’s… pretty cool,” he murmurs.

Mac knows he shouldn’t, but he laughs. “Yeah. It is.”

Neither of them says anything for a while. Mac strokes his thumb along Dennis’ cheek, touching him feather-light as if they weren’t grinding hard enough against each other to spark a fire a few minutes ago.

“I ruined it,” Dennis finally says, and a smirk forms at the edges of his mouth. “I ruined sex.”

“Yeah, you did, a little bit.”

He grumbles and rubs at his forehead, falling back onto the couch with all the grace of a dying cockroach. His hand stays over his face for a long time.

“This isn’t what I thought it would be like.”

Mac’s heart drops out of his chest, and suddenly, they’re back where they were an hour ago- Dennis recoiling into himself and Mac scared he’s going to be inadequate forever.

“What…” he starts, contemplating every word, afraid reaching out and touching Dennis might set off a landmine. “What did you think it’d be like?”

Dennis half-growls, half-whines again, and pinches the bridge of his nose like he does when he’s got a migraine forming.

“Thought I’d feel powerful, y’know- like I usually do. Thought I’d be all controlling and sexy and it’d be like I was doing you a favor by finally fucking you.” He drops his hand and meets Mac’s gaze, the corners of his eyes still red and his mouth tragically drying. “But it’s not… it’s not like that.”

That’s not enough of an explanation for Mac. It’s not the whole answer.

“What… What _is _it like?”

Dennis shrugs his shoulders. “You know what it’s like,” he says under his breath. “It’s like falling off a cliff. There’s no way to feel _powerful._ There’s no _control._ You just fall.”

_Yeah, I know,_ Mac wants to respond but doesn’t, _I’ve been falling for twenty years._

“You didn’t like it?” comes out instead.

Dennis cackles like it’s moronic.

“No, I… I liked it, Mac.” His eyes drop to Mac’s thigh as he traces his fingers along it. “Loved it.”

A grin creeps onto Mac’s face, and he knows he’s making those big, dumb doe eyes like he always does when he’s cautiously excited, but he doesn’t know how to stop it.

“I loved it, too.”

Dennis looks back at him with the ghost of a smile.

It’s thinly-veiled, but it’s easier than making things any sappier tonight, even if no one’s around to hear it or make fun of them for it, even if Dennis will probably forget half of this when he’s sober and hung over in the morning.

Mac settles in the space next to him with a content sigh.

When Dennis sniffles and speaks again, it comes out thick, like the bourbon-binge tiredness is finally starting to seep in. “I know I killed the moment, but we could still…”

“Nah,” Mac interrupts and drapes an arm across Dennis’ chest to play with his hair. He pushes a lock of his bangs up off of his wet forehead. “There’ll be lots of moments, dude. We’ll try again. Over and over again until we get it right.”

When he thinks about how many of those moments they wasted when they could have been like this, _always_ been like this, been high school sweethearts and gone to prom together and moved in with each other and spent their whole lives together… it seems stupid that they didn’t think of it sooner.

In some way, though, they _did_ do all those things- just without saying what it meant out loud. Plus, there wasn’t as much kissing as there could have been.

Oh, well. They’ll make up for it. They’ve still got plenty of time left.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked it or whatever here's the tumblr link: https://theentiregdtime.tumblr.com/post/187085014466/its-you. not that i need tumblr validation... you don't have to reblog that... but you could... haha just kidding... unless?


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